>
> >But can tell you with confidence it works, and less queen less hives 
> >as a
> result.


I'm confused by your answer Charlie.  The question wasn't about preventing queenlessness, it was whether the introduced queens (via cells) wound up replacing the old queens 85% of the time.  Could you please tell us exactly the meaning of that 85% figure, and how it was determined?

 True,  the less queenless percentage is a added perk.  As I am suspect you would agree,  for larger operations the biggest failure is hives going queenless to long and don't get caught.  So anything that also helps that is a perk.


As for how we determined it,  2 yards got all queens marked, and checked for queen cells.  Hives were 1 1/2 stories or doubles all spring hives with good populations,  but pre swarm mode (not making a ton of queen cells.) basically straight out of almonds.   Cells placed when we suspected mating weather would work out.  Hives checked again a month later.  I had tried to take what I took from Andy and Dave Miksa,  and apply a little ying/yang   do it when they were already to accept some changes anyway.  My thought was fall re queening is not very normal to the hive.  Trying to work with the bees,  not against them. (and it fit what I needed better)

I would have to dig like crazy for the original notes, but there here somewhere I suspect.  Had I realized it was such an paradigm shift I would have written it up and done a bigger trial.
I kind of assumed I was behind the curve of learning.   I didn't do it as a research project,  but as a simple tool I need to be convinced was viable. I make no promise that if you do 1000 hives the number will come out exactly the same,  just that it’s a pretty good method that I and several others find pretty handy. I considered the number of hives I used to give me a strong confidence.  If its 50% its profitable, for what I wanted to know my confidence was set.

Now finally a break in the weather and time to work some bees!  Yea!  Amazing what 6 days of rain and cold in spring does to morale.




Charles

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